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Creating A Website With WordPress

Many small business owners would be surprised at how easy it is to put up a professional-looking website with WordPress software. You can take a quick look at my firm's website for an example. (Obviously, you are reading my personal blog. I write for myself here, not for the firm.)WordPress is considered blogging software. However, it is a very strong content management system that allows for easy updates. More importantly, it is a mature platform that has many plug-ins, which help extend the functionalitiy of the software. In particular, there is a plug-in to optimize your website for search engines, another that creates sitemaps of your website and submits them to the major search engines every time you update your website, and so on. The end result is that you can make your website very accessible with minimal effort.
The entire process is not that hard. Find a host you like that supports WordPress. I currently use Just Host for my firm's website, but I have mixed reviews. They are cheap and relatively dependable. Their software packages are up-to-date. However, they keep pushing add-ons and upgrades, which is really annoying. If you want to jump in, just be aware that there's a coupon code for 20% off (SPECIAL20OFF). You can search for another WordPress-friendly host at WordPress itself.
After you find a host, register a domain. Most hosts will give you a free domain if you sign up for a year of hosting. You could also buy a domain yourself at Go Daddy. Just be aware that Go Daddy always has a bunch of coupon codes, so search for them before you buy. Go Daddy is not the best registrar out there, but they are so big that most web services will give you instructions on how to work with Go Daddy.
A WordPress-friendly host will offer one-click setup. Just install WordPress into the root directory so anyone typing in your domain name will be directed to the blog.
For most lawyers, you want a static page to show up when someone visits your site. In other words, you don't want the blog to be the first thing visitors see. You want them to see a welcome page with a navigation toolbar on the side. To do that, log into the administrator page of WordPress, and under Settings > Reading change "Front page displays" to "A static page" and select the front page. When someone visits, they'll see that static page instead of your blog.
A blog is not useful unless you can get others to know about it. That's where WordPress plug-ins show their importance. You should have the "All In One SEO Pack" that optimizes your pages for search engines. You should also have the "Google XML Sitemap" plugin that creates a list of all the content on your website, and submits it to the search engines whenever you update your website. You should use Google's Analytics and Webmasters Tools to optimize your website, and to see the content that is drawing page hits. The Google Analyticator plug-in helps you set up the service with WordPress painlessly. I have also used Bing's Webmaster Center as well.
Then you just have to create content. Make a bio page. A contact us page. A news and articles page that has your blog posts. From there, keep providing new content. The better the content, and the more up-to-date it is, the more likely Google and the other search engines are going to hike it up.
I hope this was useful. Please let me know if there's anything I can clarify.

uBlock. A lightweight ad-blocker that is faster than the competition. If you use Ad Block or Ad Block Plus, you can see that it delays the loading of websites quite significantly. I use Ad Muncher as well, which is a host-based solution that you have to install as a separate application, not as an extension.Ghostery. Blocks social media and advertising trackers.

HTTPS Everywhere. In light of all the hacking going on, it's a good idea to enhance your security. This extension redirects you to the encrypted version of all websites.

ScriptBlock. Do you hate the stupid ads that pop up when you're viewing a website? ScriptBlock controls the scripting language that makes it all possible. It's easier to use than the other script blocking extensions. When you access a domain for the first time, you will have to allow that domain. Then you should be okay.

I haven't blogged in a while but I had a bunch of new Chrome extensions I wanted to share.

1. Crypt-Up. Emails are very insecure; they bounce around weird servers that you cannot control. And encryption has been very annoying. Crypt-Up is an extension that beautifully implements PGP encryption for Gmail. (Right now, it's only for Chrome but mobile apps are being planned.) Under the PGP encryption scheme, every user has a private key and a public key. The private key is kept secret, and the public key has to be shared. To send an encrypted email, the sender uses the recipient's public key to scrambled the email. The recipient's private key is the only (known) way to unscramble it. Crypt-Up does a good job of keeping track of private and public keys, and sending emails. You can export your private key to use other PGP products and import your friend's public keys so you can send them emails even if they don't use Crypt-Up. Try it out!